Penny Thoughts: These are the Times

This column may present as more apprehensive, even more anxious and fearful, than the intended optimism which I have sought to imbue with previous observations here.

Those who know me realize that I deeply love this nation not only for what it is, but for the principles upon which it was founded. I hold to this fundamental belief regardless of the failings which our founders could not see in themselves.

It was the most glaring of those failings which cost us 800,000 American lives in the most bloody war we have ever engaged, to disentangle us from the scourge and contradiction of slavery. And it took us almost 100 years from our Declaration of Independence to meet the challenge of the contradiction of slavery.

Today, we are facing a different kind of challenge and threat which is compounded, in my estimation, by four factors:

1. Our insatiable desire to have every single bit of knowledge on any subject immediately in our hands regardless of its validity;
2. An incorrigible media which is more intent on trying to frame that knowledge with a specific agenda rather than on reporting the truth;
3. A political system trapped by only two parties; and,
4. A system which allows the representatives of the people to be elected countless times.

Of course, the threat is the COVID-19 virus, but the real peril is the reaction to COVID-19 and the tyranny which each of the four factors presents to us as citizens in a democratic republic collectively and individually.

I need not count the frustrations we all are experiencing with the dictates presented by the self-proclaimed “experts” from the medical research fields coupled with the knee-jerk mandates from state governors along with the “sky is falling” mentality spewed by the media.

Since when have Americans so freely surrendered their individual liberties in pursuit of a “safety” from a virus? We did not do it with polio as I recall, not with measles, not with scarlet fever, and not with any of the 20th century viruses to recount what we have survived. And today we are in the process of wrecking our economy, ages old social amenities like shaking hands, going to concerts, sporting events, restaurants, and now even our houses of worship!

And speaking of our houses of worship, perhaps I am a dinosaur, but I was raised to believe that our religious beliefs were to prevent us from fearing death, yet we are inhibited because of “safety” from this dreaded virus. “Safety” from dying! And we are prevented from worshiping together for “the greater good”!

I know most of you and my family, too, will hurl all sorts of epithets at me for holding this position, but to me all of this is going to go down in our history as one of the most asinine and absurd behaviors we have ever exhibited!  Right along with Prohibition, slavery, and segregation!

In the process, we have given up some very basic liberties which I do not know if we will ever be able to recover. From this perceived oppression, I have recalled the words of Thomas Paine whose introduction to his pamphlet “The American Crisis”, published on December 23, 1776, declares:

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman…

…Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly…

…and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

If we take time to reflect on the speed with which government, particularly at the state levels, began to limit our liberties in the name of “public health safety” is something which is startling.  And it was not unlike what happened in the Russian “revolution” which resulted in communism, or what the Nazi’s did to Germany, or Pol Pot in Cambodia, or Mao in China.  They achieved their ends with lightning speed.

The COVID-19 prompted us to surrender rights precisely because we trusted our elected leaders who became pawns of medical researchers who in turn became enamored with the fact that for the first time they were the arbiters of American direction not only in terms of healthy measures but the attendant social mores and ultimately our economic policies. They had the camera and they took full advantage of it!

Reflect on this: our entire American culture was being dictated to and about in every major facet by those trained in the medical arts.  And our elected leaders were too demure to challenge them, too timid to question them!

And now we are shackled with the very real prospect that even attending our houses of worship many be prohibited!

It is a new application of tyranny, but not a new form of government aggrandizement.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th Century French historian and political scientist, was a great admirer and evaluator of American democracy and offered some observations which I believe apply here.  I would implore you to think about where we are today in America as a result of our reaction to COVID-19.  De Tocqueville saw the following:

1. Administrative centralization only serves to enervate the peoples that submit to it, because it constantly tends to diminish their civic spirit.
2. He who in given cases consents to obey his fellows with servility, and who submits his will, and even his thoughts, to their control, how can he pretend that he wishes to be free?
3. The despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual.
4. Defending rights against the encroachments of the government saves the common liberties of the country.

I may be seen as an alarmist, an old man who blathers far too much, even a “nattering nay-bob of negativism”, but I will never be called un-American, un-patriotic, or one of those timid souls who far too quickly jumps to the barking of a government which seems to have lost its responsibility of defending and protecting my liberty.

When a people cease to accept their responsibility of being citizens in a republic, they will lose their liberty without even knowing it, and may even call it “progress”.

And THESE are the times that try men’s souls.